


Castle of Glass

by chiaroscure



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Episode: s05e22 Swan Song, Gen, Hints of suicidal ideation, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28437336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiaroscure/pseuds/chiaroscure
Summary: When he was a kid, Nick used to carve jack-o-lanterns every Halloween. Back then, he never thought about what it would be like to be one of those pumpkins, but that’s the first thing that comes to mind as he tries to make sense of the way he feels right now. Like a gutted pumpkin, hollowed out and empty, invisible gouges in every inch of him under the skin.*Set during s5e22 (Swan Song): Nick wakes up after everyone else has left the theater.
Relationships: Lucifer & Nick (Supernatural)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 4





	Castle of Glass

When he was a kid, he used to carve jack-o-lanterns every Halloween. The sense memory of reaching in to pull the seeds out, that satisfying-gross feeling when a fistful of the stringy guts ripped loose, scraping his nails over the hard inner flesh of the pumpkin to make sure it was fit to carve is all still with him, even now, decades later. He was pretty good at it by the time life got in the way of the annual tradition. Every once in a while, he’d find an excuse to do it again though, up until the year he and Sarah started dating, when he showed up at her apartment with the two best pumpkins he could find under his arms and a carving kit in his hand. Then it became a yearly thing again.

Back then, Nick never thought about what it would be like to be one of those pumpkins — why would he have? — but that’s the first thing that comes to mind as he tries to make sense of the way he feels right now. Like a gutted pumpkin, hollowed out and empty, invisible gouges in every inch of him under the skin. Not even a candle inside to light the bare wreckage up.

He lies on the floor of…wherever this is. He thinks that he would probably be in pain, if he could remember what pain felt like. But all he can feel is absence.

Then the headache starts. He figures that it was probably there all along and he just didn’t notice until all of a sudden. It’s really bad. Kind of a ringing, splitting sensation, like how he’d imagine getting shot point-blank would feel.

Actually, that makes sense, now that he thinks about it: he used to take care of people with phantom pains from old injuries; this could be that kind of situation. After all, he _did_ get shot in the head a while ago, even if there’s no physical sign of it anymore.

It does _really_ hurt, for something that isn’t there.

That’s interesting, he guesses. He’s not sure if it is. 

He doesn’t do anything about the headache. There’s nothing _to_ do about it. He’s not sure what the point would be, even if there were. He’s done, if not in one sense then in another.

He reflexively rubs his cheek when the raw skin on his face starts to itch though. Once he’s done that, he figures he might as well sit up, so he does. Everything is sore, like he’s been running back-to-back marathons or lifting cars with his bare hands. Although, compared to what this body has actually been doing lately, that would be nothing. And it’s nothing compared to the gutted pumpkin feeling that sits unnaturally somewhere around his soul.

This is a theater, he remembers distantly. An abandoned theater in Chicago — no, not Chicago; Chicago was the other thing. This is…this is Detroit.

Huh.

Nick has never been to Detroit before.

The floor is littered with debris and bodies — dead, no doubt. None of them would have any reason to be alive. It should be creepy, to be in a room surrounded by corpses, but he doesn’t feel that different from these ruined shells of people, so it’s hard to be bothered by them.

He sits there for a while, just feeling the feeling of unbuffered sensation.

After what could be seconds or hours, he gets up. It’s a shaky process, and it hurts, and it makes him dizzy: a year has passed since he was the one compelling this body to move, but he manages.

He walks. More dead bodies outside this room. Makes sense. Prom dress? Oh, these must be the demons of Winchester’s past. _Justice justice justice, I can give you justice_. Nick supposes this is justice. In all honesty, though, he has kind of forgotten what his own idea of justice was. Mostly what he sees in these bodies is quiet. Rest. Peace.

At least his head isn’t ringing anymore. 

He wonders for a moment if he would have liked to watch while this happened. Mostly he was out for the carnage, stashed away in the recesses of his own brain, asleep, but he harbors no illusions about what his body has been doing while not under his control. He’s gotten pretty desensitized to that kind of thing; he doesn’t think seeing it would upset him, but he’s not sure. It might be on purpose that he didn’t get to witness this go down, some last kindness to him, before It was gone, to spare him this sight. Or maybe it was accidental. Either way, it’s probably for the best.

Nick checks all the bodies as he passes to see if any of them belongs to Dean Winchester, even though he knows none of them do. He knows how It thinks about Its true vessel’s brother. Dean Winchester left this building alive and safe…if not alive and _well_. Nick spares a moment of sympathy for Dean, and wonders how much _he_ got to see, after Nick dropped.

Ah, there’s the envy Nick knew was coming.

The dark bitterness bites at his heart violently enough that he has to stop and brace himself against a doorframe. He has gotten better at envy (and rage, and grief, and wonder, and love, and more) since It took over his neural circuits, but until now Nick was never the one who had to handle it. Now, his new blown-out capacity for emotion all but cripples him as his vision blacks out and he stops breathing for a second. He scrambles to push the feeling down; he has been managing his _worse_ envy for the _other_ Winchester brother for months, and even though he had help with that, it _was_ practice. Besides, a man Nick has never met catching some short glimpse of vessel and Archangel together at last is not worth getting worked up about.

Nick would probably like to cry. He doesn’t really remember how to do that yet, though, so instead he just fixes his breathing and heads for the stairs, the gutted pumpkin emptiness aching in the space where the envy is fizzling out.

He doesn’t have a plan for what to do once he gets out of the theater. Go back to his old house? Is it even his anymore? People probably assume he’s dead. What do they do with houses that have sat empty for a year?

Go to a hospital? What would they know about…whatever this is? He knows there’s something wrong with him, probably a lot of somethings, but most of it isn’t what they train people for at medical school. He’d be better off looking for a priest or something, but he doubts that would do any good either.

Turn himself in to the police? He almost laughs at that.

Almost.

Maybe he should go and find Dean Winchester and Bobby Singer and the angel Castiel. Maybe they would have some idea of what to do with him. At least they would know what he is, if not what to do about it. Probably Dean would shoot him in the head again. Probably be satisfying for Dean, to succeed this time.

So, that’s not a bad idea.

Nick isn’t sure where to look for them, though. The hollowness in him gapes all the more for how much he doesn’t know what to do. For the last year, It has known what to do at all times. Now that he’s on his own again, he has no plan. No long-anticipated plan, no bright-burning goals, no vast impossible knowledge, no skills that could come in handy to do anything but patch up the sores on _his_ skin that isn’t _their_ skin anymore. He has nothing but the awareness that the only thing he has left to care about is going to meet Its brother tomorrow in Kansas, maybe to end the world as humanity knows it.

The emptiness throbs.

What will happen in Stull Cemetery is not Nick’s to see. He was not invited, and he doubts he would be welcome. But a glimpse of Lucifer as It was always _meant_ to walk the earth is the only thing Nick can think of to want, and he might get that glimpse before or after the deciding encounter of the apocalypse.

He’s not sure how to get there; he doesn’t have a car or money, and he doesn’t have a plan for what to do when and if he gets there. It’s a start though, and it makes the awful emptiness a little more bearable. So, he’ll figure something out.

If he’s lucky, this will be the last thing he’ll ever have to figure out on his own again.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Recent Events_ inspired me to rewatch earlier seasons of Supernatural, which in turn reminded me how much I love the show & so many of the characters in it. Full disclosure that I don't know much about what happened in later seasons and so I'm not sure how canon-non-compliant this is with later stuff (probably very lol), but I figured hey, might as well indulge in some nostalgia, right? 
> 
> (Title from the song of the same name by Linkin Park)
> 
> Thanks for reading! You can find me on tumblr @[sinaesthete](https://sinaesthete.tumblr.com/)


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